Inside the world of author AnnMarie Wyncoll

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Month: November 2016

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that I have spent a lot of time recently working on my social media. The result is a website (www.annmariewyncoll.com) that I have to say I am proud of and, to mark its completion, I am offering a FREE giveaway to everyone who visits.

And what, I hear you ask, is the giveaway?

Well, I’ve decided to put together a small compendium of short stories entitled ‘A Twisted Paradise’and the giveaway is your very own e-book copy. Easy to read and ideal for coffee time, these will give you a taste of my writing and a chance to get to know me better.

How do I get my giveaway?

Well, that’s easy. All you need to do is head over to my website (www.annmariewyncoll.com), wait for the pop up window that asks if you would like a free gift and then enter your email address. I’ll do the rest and within 24hrs your very own copy of my EXCLUSIVE e-book will arrive in your inbox.

This e-book will never be published; it is exclusive to my website visitors and regular readers only. And to tempt your tastebuds further, here’s a glimpse of the cover…

A couple of days ago I activated Google Analytics on my website. Over the last few months I’ve been monitoring the traffic to my site (www.annmariewyncoll.com) and there has been regular activity. Now that I am going to be publishing my book I felt it was important to find out who was visiting my site.

When I logged in to my analytics for the first time yesterday, this is what I found:

Considering this was the data from less than 24 hrs and I’m not actively marketing, I was chuffed with these figures. I was especially thrilled that my bounce rate was 0% (meaning that the users hung around) and that the session duration was over 6 minutes, meaning that they had read my content.

And then I started to dig a little deeper…

It turns out that my excitement was short lived. Upon analysing the demographics and language, I discovered that the only visitor to my website had in fact been a Russian robot who very kindly left me a ‘Vote Trump’ link which is (a) a tad late and (b) completely irrelevant since I live in the UK. Hmph…

However, I am looking at this as a positive. I was hoping that using analytics would assist me in targeting my market – which of course it will – but it is clear that it is also beneficial in showing me the true picture of who is visiting my site. If it turns out that all I am going to be visited by are robots, then I guess I need to think of a way to engage with them.

With all of the social media training I’ve been doing, I’ve come to realise just how important a good website is. Not only does it provide me with a place to ‘put’ everything, it also gives me an opportunity to connect with the world at large without needing to be a friend or part of their network. So, I have spent the last few days completely re-vamping my website which was tired, old and let’s be honest – static.

I decided to stay with GoDaddy as I still really like their easy to use drag and drop builder but, as with any web host/builder, there is an annual cost involved. In total I’ve paid around £150 for annual hosting, domain name and other necessities but I decided not to take the business email option and am sticking with my personal one for now.

However, the costs as I’ve just discovered, don’t stop there:

I wanted to add a sign up form (well, multiple ones for different uses) in order to allow anyone interested to sign up to my newsletter, giveaways and free gifts. You can do this using a free provider such as MailChimp, however I have to say that I personally found their interface difficult to navigate and integration into my site was even more tricky. The main issue for me though was that I couldn’t seem to change the text on the signup button (which by default says Subscribe) and that was something I wanted to be able to do. Cue purchasing the inbuilt GoDaddy signup form which did everything I needed it to do – at a cost.

GoDaddy have a fantastic helpline and after talking to them about the signup forms it became apparent that my site was not secure ie. I didn’t have an SSL certificate attached. Previously this was not a problem. Visitors would occasionally get a pop up warning them they were visiting an unsecured site but since January this year, Google have been cracking down on unsecure sites. This means that if you don’t have an SSL certificate, all of your visitors will potentially be notified that your site is not secure which means that a number of them will leave before they’ve even got there – I know because I rarely click a site which is unsecure. The solution? Purchase an SSL certificate. Yay – more cost.

The website that I have built is currently optimised for desktop only which means that although it can be accessed through tablets and mobiles, it will not display correctly. This looks bad for potential new visitors, especially as far more of us access the internet from our mobile devices now as compared to desktops. As someone who is serious about building up my brand and author profile, I need everything to be professional which means I need my site optimised for mobile. Guess what? That costs too.

So, back to the title of this post.

My monthly chocolate fund is now non-existent and I have had to agree to all of these costs forming part of my Christmas and birthday gifts until the end of time – or until I make enough money to pay them back.

Okay, I may be a little tongue in cheek here but we are certainly having to make financial sacrifices in order to fund this self-publishing journey. I guess it’s kind of a catch 22 situation. There is the option to do as much as you can for free and hope that’s enough to bring in interest and sales, or spend money on marketing, websites and other promotional activities to increases your profile and thus your visibility.

When thinking about all of the cost implications, I’ve almost forgotten that this is about one simple book that isn’t even published yet.

Oh well, as long as said book to sells enough copies for the chocolate fund to be reinstated I’ll be fine.

PS. Those of you on desktop, check out the fruits of my labours here – Author AnnMarie Wyncoll – I’ve not done the mobile optimisation yet. I need to wait for next month’s credit card bill….

If you’re anything like me you will be soaking up as much information as is humanly possible related to all things author/writing/promotion/marketing.

Right?

The problem with this is that my head is so full of stuff that I can’t remember which bits came from where and then I usually forget something really important along the way.

This started me thinking about which resources I place the most value in (across the disciplines) and I came up with a kind of ‘top five’ which I thought I’d share here. I’m not guaranteeing you’ll find everything you need to know but for me, they’ve all been hugely beneficial.

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Online courses and learning:

To learn all about social media and digital marketing (and loads of other stuff) visit Shaw Academy. They are the ‘largest live educator on the planet’ and deliver their courses via easy to access webinars. At the end of each course you can earn a diploma which gives you credibility on your CV – plus, you’ve gained the knowledge.

The courses can be expensive but Shaw Academy partner with Groupon and you can often get discounted or even free offers from there. Occasionally you will find an advert for a free course on Facebook or by visiting the MOOC home page.

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Blog:

The blog of Anne R Allen is a hugely valuable resource for writers. As well as covering all of the usual topics, she also unpicks thorny issues such as the new Amazon reviews system which is something we all need to be on top of when we are trying to get our books higher up the Amazon ladder.

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Design:

To design blog/social media headers, posts, advertisements and promotional materials, then head to Canva.com. Here you can sign up for free and design whatever resource you need. You can upload your own images or Canva will license images for a small fee. Once your project is complete you can save it as a print-ready pdf which works with many of the online publishing companies (for promotional materials).

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Magazines:

In the UK we have two fabulous writing magazines, namely Writing Magazine and Writers’ Forum. These are both packed full of advice as well as offering competitions and writing opportunities. You can get the latest information from the writing industry and, if you’re lucky, win a break to a writer’s retreat. These can be expensive for a subscription but if you do what I did and ask for it for Christmas and/or Birthday, then it doesn’t cost you a penny and is well worth it.

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Editing and Cover Design:

Although I want to keep them all to myself, it’s only fair to share the talents of both my wonderful editor and talented cover designer.

For editing I use Esther Newton who I cannot recommend highly enough. She has been a huge source of encouragement to me and I know that with her support I am going to produce the best novel that I can.

For cover design I’ve had the privilege of working with Rachel Lawston. If you visit her website then her credentials speak for themselves but in terms of managing to make sense of my rough ramblings, she has been amazing.

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So there you have it – my thoughts and favourite resources from this crazy world of writing! Hope you find it useful.

I was a late bloomer as far as Facebook was concerned and, in terms of personal usage, I still am. I don’t have an issue with it at all, I am just not one for sharing my life with the world at large. Business wise, however, I have come to realise that I need to embrace social media – want to know why?

Here are six very good reasons*:

92% of the UK population actively use the internet and of those, 38million are engaging on social media. This represents well over half of our UK population.

Based on survey statistics, 77% of the UK population bought something online in the preceding month prior to survey. The survey covered an age range of 16-64 yr olds. (This figure is 66% for the USA).

Facebook is the largest social media network in the world and has 1.59 Bn users worldwide.

Facebook is the largest social media network in the UK with almost half (47%) of our population accessing it. It outperforms Twitter at 20%, Instagram at 14% and Google+ and LinkedIn at 10% each.

Most Facebook users in the UK are in the age range 20-29yrs although ages 40-59 yrs now make up 29% of the total UK audience.

As a country we spend 1.5 hrs per day on social media (age range 16-64 yrs).

Okay, so there’s lots of figures here but hopefully you get the general idea. The internet, social media and in particular Facebook, is huge. We are living in an era where technology is king and whilst we still watch television, we are only viewing for 2hrs 45mins a day on average whereas the internet is accessed well over 3hrs per day (per head of population).

As someone who enjoys technology I don’t find the use of social media particularly daunting, I do, however, find its use as a marketing tool challenging. Given these statistics though, I realise that I cannot ignore the internet or social media as a way to develop my author brand and reputation so I have been taking courses on both digital marketing and social media marketing with the brilliant Shaw Academy.

I am not suggesting that these courses are for everyone, but when I realised just how much of my potential market was online, I knew that not only is social media where it is at, it needs to be the way forward for me.

What about you? What are your thoughts on social media and your brand? Are you embracing it?

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*All data courtesy of WeAreSocial @wearesocial.sg – the full report can be found below:

Apple users and anyone else with the Safari internet browser – this one’s for you.

I thought I would share this issue and resolution, purely because it took me literally hours to figure it out. In the end the answer was so simple! If I can prevent anyone else from tearing their hair (or anything else) out, then great!

The issue:

I was trying to use the video manager feature in YouTube and I kept getting an error message which said ‘a modern version of Flash player needs to be installed’. I had Flash installed with automatic updates, so I had no idea what it meant.

The solution:

Firstly, navigate to your System Preferences and, in the bottom left- hand corner, you should see the Flash player icon. If you don’t then you have not got Flash installed so you need to visit adobe.com and download the latest version.

Click on the Flash player icon and then the tab marked ‘updates’. Make sure that the ‘automatic updates’ box is checked and then click on both of the ‘check now’ boxes at the bottom, one at a time. This will check your computer to see which version of Flash you have and will direct you to the appropriate download, should your version need updating.

Once you’ve updated then you’re good to go…or so I thought.

Believe it or not, just updating your Flash player is not sufficient – you actually have to tell Safari that you would like it to use the Flash player plug-in.

Tell Safari to use Flash player:

Open Safari and then click on the word ‘safari’ in the top left toolbar. From the drop-down menu select Preferences.

In the preferences box, navigate to the Security option and you will see this:

Make sure that the Internet plug-ins box is ticked and then click on ‘Plug-in Settings…’.

You will see this:

And this is where the problem lies.

You will see a list of websites with toggles On/Off. If YouTube or any website that you are trying to use with Flash player is listed here and the toggle is Off, then Safari does not know that you want Flash enabled on that site.

All you have to do therefore is select the website that you are trying to use, turn the toggle to On and then Flash player will work.